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 “Ah, that was a proper nine-cow, that was.”

Thank Goddess, the ritual is finally over.

The friend standing beside me turns and whispers in my ear: “Two goats.”

I smile and nod.

If anything, she's being generous. Me, I'm thinking chickens, myself.

Back in the days when Witches were Hwicce, we counted our wealth in livestock. Our modern word fee (1500 years ago, it was feoh) originally meant “cow.”

That's why rituals are rated in animals.

What my friend was talking about is the fee—number of animals—you would have had to pay the ritual specialist in order to get a ritual of comparable quality back in old tribal days.

These days, when you see online reviews of rituals, they'll sometimes be accompanied by little pictures of animals: chickens, goats, cows.

Think of it as a Star-rating for ritual.

Cows are the best: the more the better.

The best possible ritual is a nine-cow ritual. That's the one that, for the very best of reasons, you'll remember for the rest of your life, the one that they'll still be talking about 100 years from now.

The ratings go down from there. Even a one-cow ritual is still a good ritual.

Considerably less prestigious than cows are goats.

(Depending on where and when we've talking, a good milch cow would have brought you anywhere between 20 and 50 goats apiece.)

A nine-goat ritual, well...let me be generous and say that it's better than a two-goat ritual.

Then there are the real stinkers: the ones you'll remember for the rest of your life, but for the very worst of reasons.

Those are the ones that are rated in chickens.

Well, N, having survived your man-making, you're now what's called a New Spear.

As for that reproduction La Tène Celtic leaf-blade spear that you carried as a sign of your new standing in victorious procession back to the village afterwards: that's the New Spear's New Spear, and you are now its keeper.

(In the old days, of course, you would have been initiated with a whole age-set of peers, and the Spear would have passed to the youngest; but these days are not those.)

So you are now the keeper of the tribe's New Spear, just as I am the keeper of the Great Ooser, the antlered god-mask that the Horned wears when he comes among us in ritual. The Spear does not belong to you in the sense of owning it, just as the Mask doesn't belong to me; they belong to the tribe as a whole. We're just the lucky ones to be privileged with their keeping.

Care for that spear. It's your responsibility now.

Keep it in a clean and sacred place. Feed it from time to time. Be sure to keep the shaft well-oiled, and the head well-polished.

(Get that look off your face, N, I'm talking about a spear.)

...Well, if I say it who made it myself: that was one kick-ass Man-Making ceremony. They'll still be talking about that one a hundred years from now.

So I figure you owe me, what, something in the neighborhood of...say...nine cows. Good milch cows, too, mind you, nothing old and milked-out.

A nine-cow coming-of-age ceremony: now there's something you'll be able to tell your grandchildren about.

(“My family paid nine fine milch cows for my man-making,” you'll tell them, and they'll say, “Oh, grandpa, you're such a bull-shitter....”)

Hey, our people's cattle have always been our pride. You know what they say about us, that every word in our language means three things: something good, something bad, and something to do with a cow.

What? What? You can't be serious. You've got to be kidding.

 In the Zone

My friend picks up.

“It's official,” I say, skipping the preliminaries. “I'm in the zone. Peak obsession.”

He laughs. He's a ritualist, too. He totally gets it.

Oh, this ritual. Three years in the making. Now we're nearly there.

I pity those around me. They must be utterly weary of hearing about it. I can literally think of nothing else. I fall asleep thinking about it. I woke up this morning thinking about it.

Gods, I love this.

For a big-ass, elaborate rite with lots of moving parts like this one, you have to think through every tiny, obsessive little detail beforehand.

(Why? Because they matter. That's what we believe, that's what we know.)

Of course, you never quite manage to think of everything. For any ritual, no matter how simple or well-honed, there's one certainty, and one only: it will never go exactly as planned.

Co-priest for this ritual, my friend must have seen tens of drafts over the last few months. I make one tiny change. “Now it's perfect,” I think, and send it off.

Then I think of something else. So far, we've seen a Final Draft, a Final Final Draft, and the Final Draft to End All Final Drafts.

Finally, I just started a new file.

I'm walking in ancestral footprints here.

Ever since our people first began, we've enacted ceremonies.

Ever since our people first began, ceremonialists have obsessed about every single, bloody detail.

Not for all the world would I trade it.

Why did the gods make the world? Not hard.

The thing that I remember most was the look of sheer, excruciating boredom on the young woman's face.

The secret rites by which the tribe's girls become the tribe's women duly enacted, I was the first man to arrive for the after-party, red-wrapped gift in hand.

When I got there, the women were still sitting in a circle on the floor, talking at—not with—the newest of their number. They thought, I suppose, that they were imparting valuable life-lessons.

Instead—their actions contradicting the supposed effect of the ritual they had just performed—they were treating her like a little kid who has to be told what to do.

I don't know how people came to think of a Coming-of-Age ritual as the appropriate time and place to lecture the young on the Weird Ways of Adults.

My guess would be that, somewhere back in the Pagan Dark Ages, when the Old Lore had been lost and well lost, we knew that we had to do something for the occasion, but—lacking real Mysteries—we didn't know what it was.

So we settled for a lecture instead.

Well, the Old Mysteries are back, and then some.

Screw being talked at.

First, you undergo the Rite of Passage.

Then you experience at first hand the change of status that the rite accomplished.

What's a sermon got to do with that?

When, at this Summer's upcoming ingathering of the Midwest Tribe of Witches, the Rites of Man-Making have been duly enacted for young N, he will sit, for the first time, in the Circle of Men around the fire and, for the first time, speak as a man among men. He will listen, and be heard.

Of Full Disclosure, and the Wisdom of the Ancestors

“Seriously? People have been asking you that?”

I'm talking with the mother of a boy that we'll soon be initiating into manhood. Incredibly, people have been asking her, “What will be happening at the Man-Making?”

Otherwise known as the Men's Mysteries, these are the ancient oath-bound rites by which the tribe's boys become the tribe's men. The traditional answer to this question—just possibly (so old are these things) one of humanity's oldest sayings—would be: What no man may tell, nor woman know.

“What have you been telling them?” I ask her, a little taken aback.

“I've been telling them, How the heck would I know?” she says.

There are no women at the Men's Mysteries, nor men at the Women's. Any pagan should already know this. If it's non-pagans that are doing the asking—there will be a few at the after-party, friends of the boy, and their families—they'll be getting a crash course in pagan culture.

I note that no one has been asking this question of me, the actual keeper of this Mystery for the tribe. A sudden mischief seizes me.

“You have my permission to tell them that we'll be plotting to disempower women and subvert the matriarchy,” I say, grinning.

“Hey, it's N, the soon-to-be-man of the hour,” I say. “You all ready for your circumcision tonight?”

It wouldn't be a rite of passage without a little gallows humor beforehand.

“Ha, ha,” he says. “Pagans don't practice circumcision.”

I check my trousers.

“You sure about that?” I ask.

He snorts and shakes his head. What do you do with an elder who thinks he's a comedian? The expression on his face says: You're incorrigible.